Yesterday I wore a red dress patterned with cherry blossoms and for hours and hours sat in the sun under the blossoming cherry trees and laughed and drank beer and walked and made jokes that would be impossible to share.

Today I look in the mirror and I am wearing the inverse of that red dress, my white skin a ghost of where the dress lay and a red sunburn where it was not. And I laugh at myself as this was predictable but I just did not care.

There is a man with ginger colored hair on the train, the same orange as his t-shirt. He is hip and sliding into middle-age, his face rounding out with contented fat, of no longer playing games of pick-up soccer in the park, and when he looks down I can see his father in his face, his grandfather, his generations of unbroken.

A soft bump against my hand on the pole and I look over to see a short woman fiddling with her CD player, her breast carelessly pressing against me as the train jumps into motion. It happens again, and again, and she does not look at me or even shrug an acknowledgement and I wonder would she be so unconcerned if I were a man and what would it take for me to become visible to her, for my presence to matter.